Verified by Reaping a Botanical Bounty
Ethnobotanist Cassandra Quave thinks the cure for antibiotic resistance could be found deep in the forest—or even in our own backyards.
By Devon Frye published January 4, 2022 - last reviewed on January 10, 2022
A partial amputation of Cassandra Quave’s right leg at age three—one of many surgical interventions undertaken to help her cope with congenital skeletal defects—allowed her to walk with the aid of a prosthetic. But it came with a cost: an aggressive staph infection that nearly took her life. Antibiotics helped Quave overcome the microbes that attacked her amputation site, but every year, hundreds of thousands of others die from bacteria that have grown impervious to modern pharmaceuticals.
Now a professor of dermatology and human health at Emory University, Quave has focused her career on these superbugs, searching for new ways to fight them among humanity’s original source of medicine: plants. In her memoir The Plant Hunter, she details her quest, which has taken her from the jungles of Peru to the mountains of Kosovo, while asking us to consider what we lose when we sever our connection to the natural world—and what we can gain from a closer look at the living landscapes around us.
How did growing up with a disability foster your interest in medical science?
From birth, I was basically immersed in medicine. Beyond the amputation, I had to have my femur lengthened, my back straightened, my hip rebuilt. Being in medical environments so often, and seeing other kids dealing with some really awful issues, stuck with me. My mind became fixated on two things that I saw as being most important in medicine: surgery and pharmacological interventions.
How does the work you’re doing now help in the fight against bacterial infections?
I like the example of the Brazilian peppertree because it’s an underdog story. Everyone in Florida, where I grew up, hates it because it’s an invasive weed. But in Brazil, it has a long history of use in traditional medicine to treat wounds and ulcers. But that use hadn’t yet been explained by science until my lab and I came along. We found that it doesn’t work by inhibiting the growth of bacteria. Instead, compounds we isolated block the communication systems in staph bacteria. They’re not able to coordinate their attacks, which basically renders them nontoxic.
How did the use of plants as medicine become the focus of your research?
Modern medicine already benefits from countless innovations originally found in the plant world. Advances in anesthesia, for example, came thanks to dart poisons from the Amazon. Some therapies used to treat congestive heart failure come from plant-based remedies used by elder herb women in the British Isles. Yet I still find myself having to re-educate other scientists who believe that studying plants is not a worthwhile endeavor.
Why not?
Part of it is that we’re so disconnected from nature; we don’t often give a second thought to where a lot of our food, clothing, and medicine has come from. There’s also this idea that we’ve already investigated plants and found everything of value. But that’s just not true; there are 33,000 species of plants that have been used as medicine by humans, but we’re still in the very low hundreds of those that have been rigorously scientifically evaluated. There’s a vast amount of chemical diversity to explore.
While studying to become a surgeon, you journeyed into the Amazon to work with a traditional healer, Don Antonio. How did that experience shift your perspective?
It was my first exposure to the idea that there were other forms of medicine besides Western. Working with Don Antonio allowed me to see not just how traditional practices work but also where the shortcomings of Western approaches can be. As a child, I often felt that I was treated like a problem rather than a person—not because physicians are uncaring, but because they’re strictly limited in how much time they can spend with patients. What I experienced alongside Don Antonio was a patient-healer relationship that was much more involved; there was more emotional connection, even physical connection. The psychology of that connection is really key to the process of healing.
Why is it so important to work directly with these healers?
We’re currently facing a massive loss of traditional knowledge. Working in the Amazon, I saw very clearly that endeavors to bring Western medicine into remote places can cause problems because they push out traditional systems of knowledge on how to use the local resources. And when those communities no longer have money to restock their modern pharmacies, they’re left with nothing. One major task of ethnobotany is to preserve and document knowledge. But it’s not as easy as just writing everything down; it’s really about fostering and supporting these traditions in the communities themselves. I learn from elderly grandparents who are using plants to treat their children and grandchildren. But then it’s critical to try to return that knowledge to the community—whether by starting an ethnobotanical garden, writing a book in the local language, or working with local cultural organizations to hold workshops.
How can we better connect with the plants around us?
A lot of the lore around medicines has emphasized the exotic—that we must go to far, distant places to find new cures. And I do go to different places in my work. But there are a lot of species in our neighborhoods that also make important contributions to life as we know it today—whether it’s their use in timber, food, clothing, or other applications. One simple way to get more attuned is to learn about some of the organisms you encounter on a daily basis. My challenge would be to pick just one species to get to know. Maybe it’s an oak tree in your backyard or a dandelion weed. Take a second look; find out what it’s been used for. It can help you see the natural world with different eyes.
